Xbox Game Pass

In Carrion’s defence, it is at least somewhat novel. I was looking forward to it, and am disappointed that the PS4 release has now been seemingly at least delayed.

You're all terrible people (except JDub).

Tell Me Why is the latest game from DONTNOD, the developers of Life is Strange - it's very much in the same style. There are three episodes, the first released yesterday and the other two are coming out over the next two weeks.

I've played through the first episode and it's great, a story about a pair of psychic twins and what may or may not have happened when they were kids. One of the protagonists is transgender, too, and they've handled that with tact and restraint. Really looking forward to the next two episodes coming out.

Tales of Vesperia hitting GamePass shortly.

I’ll defer to my learned friend Alastor to tell me whether it’s worth my time or not.

It's a beautiful game with likable characters and combat that is fun but takes a super long time to build up unfortunately. I have no idea how many Tales games you've played but they are full on no holds barred JRPGs that can take a lot of your time. Many consider this the best in the series and I'd agree with that, but if you don't like Tales you probably won't like it.

I think everyone forgot by now but I was actually playing all this series in a row then fell behind because I stopped to play every Trails game in a row. The reason I became so into Tales games is that they tend to have really good combat and they aren't afraid to mix it up between games, Tales of Xillia is probably my favourite jrpg combat of all time and if I prefer real time to turn based its probably because of this series. The stories on the other hand can vary and so can the casts in each game and the reason Vesperia is usually seem as the best is that its probably the most balanced across the board in that regard in that it has eventually fun combat and a likable cast AND a decent story.

If its on game pass I'd download it just to watch that intro

I’ve played a little bit of the GameCube one (Symphonia?) and a little bit of one on the PSP (Eternia?) but never got super far into either of them. If this is a good one then I’ll definitely take a look, at least.

I remember playing and enjoying it on 360. Although I gave up at a desert. It just kept going.

(The game, not the desert.)

Yeah, it's a long game.

I think I gave up at the desert too.

But that intro tho'

REACHING OUT FOR NO MAN'S LAND
TO TAKE A BREATH AND TAKE A CHANCE

Started playing through Vesperia again; it's all very lovely. It's like sinking into a Sunday-morning cartoon. I haven't played many JRPGs, but I love the optional talking heads. The writing in these bits seems to be a cut above most JRPGs.

I'm confident I'll give up in the desert again.

Yes, the party interactions are great. The talking heads (Or skits as they are known, they're a Tales series thing) all give you extra party moments and whatnot. It's not even just those, there's also stuff like the post battle victory animations of which there are loads. If you pay attention to some of them you'll see stuff like Estelle's running game long quest to get a high five from everyone (including Repede), the way Rita has no idea what a high five is at first and then later it's changed to her being all for it.

Even in the game itself, I really liked how Yuri interacts with the other party members, particularly Karol. Despite a bit of teasing here and there ("Prepare to die, eggbear!") he's almost always trying to support the guy. There's aso how close Rita and Estelle end up being despite not getting on at first, nothing groundbreaking but it is nice.

Supraland is a clever little 3D platform/puzzler but for some reason something about it gives me hellish motion sickness, something I’ve never suffered from with games. I’ve tried playing around with the options but nothing really helps. What the hell they’ve done to achieve this feat, I have no idea.

I had a look on YouTubelol and it appears to use a combination of depth-of-field and chromatic aberration that gave me a little difficulty; I imagine it might be exacerbated by a full-size TV. It looked like the framerate and field of view weren't helping either…

Yeah. I knocked down the field of view and upped the motion blur, which made it all a bit smoother, and that seemed to help a bit but I’ve just played it for an hour and I feel distinctly unwell.

I wonder if it’s the horizontal camera movement - it’s very abrupt, if that makes sense, there’s no kind of acceleration on it, and the kind of game it is means you’re always swinging your point of view around. Combine that with the low frame rate and it’s not great.

Either way, it’s very odd, but I don’t think I can play this any more.

Supraland is lovely – thanks for the flag, I'd completely dismissed it based on the screenshots. I thought it was a 3D minecraft knock-off, but it's a brilliantly inventive puzzler.

It's a shame about your motion sickness. There's definitely something weird about the FOV, depth of field, sense of scale, framerate… it hasn't made me motion sick but I can totally see why it would.

But it's a lovely game. Some very inventive puzzles, and nothing that has made me feel too thick yet. My only negative so far (aside from a bit of visual jank) is the enemies. The game would be stronger without them; their only purpose seems to be annoying the player.

Carto is another little puzzler that’s been added this week. You move map tiles around like Carcassonne to solve puzzles and open up new routes. It’s very Generic GamePass Game though: offensively twee, a few hours long, all based around a single mechanic that you can see it will have beaten to death by the end of the game, and full of dialogue boxes. I don’t want to talk to all these tedious villagers, I want to solve puzzles, thanks.

This morning I saw trailers for both Carto and Spiritfarer on Nintendo's YouTube channel. Was about to buy both, then realised they're both on Game Pass.

I really hope Game Pass is paying off for Microsoft, because it's a godsend for gamers.

Worth a reminder that EA Access joins GamePass on Tuesday. All those sports titles may not appeal but Star Wars fans are pretty well covered with the likes of Battlefront 2, and I think Jedi Fallen Order is joining the service on the same day.

I'm mostly looking forward to getting my hands on the original Mass Effect trilogy before the remaster inevitably "fixes" all the things that made them (especially the first one) interesting.

before the remaster inevitably "fixes" all the things that made them (especially the first one) interesting.

That's literally how I felt about Mass Effect 2 after the first game lmao. I'm still mad about the heat clip thing tbh

The fix for heat clips was that the guns should have cooled down regardless, but heat clips cooled them instantly. You keep the original concept, but add a tactical option as long as you have a supply.

It was such a weird seemingly out of nowhere change (and one that changed something I really enjoyed about using guns in ME1 so I feel justified in moaning about it). If I wanted to be really bold I'd say that I liked the Mako overall too, shitty sparse planets (that looked nice at times, has to be said) and getting stuck on an incline was the majority of it….but those other times, man, it made me feel like a Space Explorer. Scouring a planet under a meteor shower and then finding the (copy and paste, but eh) Pirate base and shooting them all down before going back to the comfy confines of your Ship. The COMPLETELY optional trip to the Moon and looking at Planet Earth from it. :(

Still really looking forward to the game itself, just not as much as the first and I never got round to the third, so very excited to meet my Fish Husband again tbh.

Tomorrow is a crazy day for Game Pass. Personally I'll be playing Gears Tactics, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, Jedi Fallen Order, and Tetris Effect, all for the first time.

God bless Microsoft's deep pockets.

Impressive. I’ve played all of those apart from Destiny, and they’re all excellent. Going to switch my ongoing Gears Tactics play through to the Xbox I think, assuming it supports save transfer from the PC version. And I’m interested in seeing what the extra horsepower of the Series X does for Jedi Janky Order.

So far, Tetris Effect has taught me one thing. I'm shit at Tetris. Who knew you even could be shit at Tetris?

Can't get past the 3rd stage on Easy. Sort of takes away from the hallucinegenic, in-the-zone moments when you're having to restart the stage before the music even kicks in.

My son plays Tetris Effect like a serial killer. He spends ages stacking up complicated but extremely precise structures on each side then whacks a load of T-shaped pieces down the middle repeatedly, spinning them at the last second for double T-spin bonuses. I’ve never seen anyone play the game like it. It’s quite terrifying.

(I am also shit at Tetris)

My son plays Tetris Effect like a serial killer.

Buried in the garden?

So far, Tetris Effect has taught me one thing. I'm shit at Tetris. Who knew you even could be shit at Tetris?

I wouldn't be so hard on yourself, watching expert Tetris play is mind melting.

So far, Tetris Effect has taught me one thing. I'm shit at Tetris. Who knew you even could be shit at Tetris?

Can't get past the 3rd stage on Easy. Sort of takes away from the hallucinegenic, in-the-zone moments when you're having to restart the stage before the music even kicks in.

Is it the tropical island level? I'm stuck on that, on Easy, on the Oculus :( It's fucking impossible.

It wasn't, although I've managed to get past it, and I'm now stuck on a different early level. It's so much more punishing than I was expecting, even on Easy.

Gears Tactics is great. It's very much X-Com Lite, with added Gears campness. It's Mario x Rabbids with gore.

Deep Rock Galactic has been added on PC. Wanted to try that for a while and it seems decent.

Can someone do me a favour, and try to download an EA Play game from Game Pass? Battlefield 5, for example, if you don't already own it.

It's not giving me the option, but according to Xbox support I'm just mistaken…

I tried and it said "Mr Party Hat is a poopy head" on my screen.

And then it started installing fine.

Goddammit. Stupid everyone except me.

Fixed. On the off-chance anyone needs the solution:

Cancel your recurring Game Pass sub.

Go to My Games and Apps.

Go to Full Library and select EA Play.

Follow the prompts to 'renew' Ultimate, right up until the subscribe button.

Back all the way out, and it should work. God knows why, but it should.

Planet Coaster is great, and absolutely gorgeous. I remember when theme park games looked like, well, Theme Park, so it's incredible seeing the amount of detail in this.

Despite sharing Two Point Hospital's UI aesthetic – all chunky buttons and colourful numbers – it's a lot more intimidating, and doesn't seem quite as suited to a gamepad. But it's scratching that Rollercoaster Tycoon itch nicely.

Yeah, it's really good. Been playing it for a while now on PC but they've done a great job with the console conversion from what I've seen. It's even X/S optimised but I don't know what the differences are between this and the One X version, probably just resolution.

What with this, Two Point Hospital and Cities Skylines all getting good-to-great console conversions, I'm less inclined than ever to play games on the PC. Hopefully their follow-up Planet Zoo will be the next to make the jump.

The console versions have a limit to the amount of 'stuff' you can have in your park. I imagine that limit is a lot bigger on next gen.

It hasn't affected me on the One X, but people online have been getting arsey about the base console limits.

I have hit a snag. Sometimes, games don't launch on Gamepass for PC. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Have you got the latest version of the app? It changed recently.

The console versions have a limit to the amount of 'stuff' you can have in your park. I imagine that limit is a lot bigger on next gen.

It hasn't affected me on the One X, but people online have been getting arsey about the base console limits.

Didn't people get arsey because the devs hid it on streams for months by putting a gif over the top of the bit showing the build limitation?

Apparently Valhalla (Va-11 Hall-a) is on the PC Gamepass, get on that!!!

Yakuzas 3, 4 and 5 are landing on GamePass on January 28th, with Yakuza 6 following on March 26th.

Guess I'm finally gonna have to get back to Kiwami.

They are odd entries, especially if you're playing them in order.

After the modern-day graphical bells and whistles of Kiwami 2, 3 is rough - it's an early PS3 game given a basic remaster and initially at least it's incredibly jarring to go back to. The combat system is basic and the characters look ropey. It's worth sticking with, as the main story is actually one of the strongest entries in the whole series and the game overall has a lot of heart, but it's not perhaps one to get carried away with all the side-activities.

4 also has that early-PS3 thing going on but it's a bit of a step up technically and you get to play as three new characters as well as Kiryu - one of them is great, but two of them are pretty terrible, and overall the game suffers from being set only in Kamurocho, which is probably getting a bit over-familiar by now. The storyline in this one is utterly, utterly stupid and I was very fed up with it by the end of the game.

5 is a step up again, it's using the Zero engine so it looks pretty good and it is absolutely mental in terms of content: 5 characters, 5 cities, insane side activities like taxi driving and hunting that are practically games in their own right, and a completion list that is just incredibly daunting. The pacing is… leisurely, to say the least. I got through the first section on the PS4 and felt like I'd played an entire game by that point, I got sidetracked/slightly burned out halfway through the second section. I might well restart it on Xbox, though. It's very good.

6 is highly regarded, and apparently a lot more sensible in terms of content, but I haven't played that one yet.

Monster Train has just hit GamePass - been looking forward to trying this one for a while now. It's got a lot in common with Slay the Spire, maybe not quite as slick in terms of presentation but looks like it's got plenty of depth. If you like your deckbuilders/roguelikes then it's definitely worth a look.

Couple of random GamePass impressions:

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair takes the entirely charmless cast from the previous game, which was a second-rate Banjo-Kazooie clone, and places them in this one, which is a second-rate Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze clone. I mean it's… OK? It's a passably pretty platform game with a bunch of collectibles and secrets to find on each level. But the characters, oh god, the characters. There's a snake that wears trousers, and it's called Trowzer Snake. If you think that's the height of wit, you're going to love this game.

CrossCode looks excellent. I thought from the screenshots it was going to be a turgid, SNES-style JRPG but it's actually a zippy Alundra/LTTP-style game with a great setting and some genuinely snappy dialogue. I've only played the first chapter and I'm itching to get back to it.

Wilmot's Warehouse is OCD in game form. If you enjoy tidying up, this will be your game of the year.

Call of the Sea is great (was it Gar who mentioned it?) I'm a sucker for Myst-likes.

Although it's weirdly blurry on the Series S. I get that it's supposed to run stuff at lower resolution, but it looks like I'm accidentally being served the One S version or something.

World War Z is firmly on the pile of "would be shite but co-op makes it fun". It's a Left 4 Dead rip off with none of Left 4 Dead's polish, but with a group of mates it's great.